Cellular communications systems typically provide interconnect and/or dispatch voice communication services. Interconnect voice communication services are those typically provided by most cellular carriers as circuit-switched communications. Dispatch communication services are commonly known as a “walkie-talkie” type of call, such as provided by Nextel Communications, Inc. and identified by the trade names Push-To-Talk (PTT) or Direct Connect. The popularity of dispatch calls is ever expanding and this increase in popularity has created a demand for more features to be associated with these types of calls.
Currently, dispatch communication services can typically provide private and group calls. A private dispatch call is between two parties, while a group dispatch call is between more than two parties, each of whom can converse with each of the other participants during the call. Group calls are becoming increasingly popular because they allow a subscriber to converse with numerous other subscribers in the same session. This provides particular utility in both business applications and for social communications. However, there are aspects in the way dispatch group calls are conducted today that may not be desirable in all circumstances.
One such aspect is that currently dispatch group calls are generally conducted between group members for groups that are pre-defined prior to the calls. For example, if a business person regularly needs to communicate with certain other people in the business, the person can define a group to include these other people and upon initiation of a group call to these persons, all are automatically connected into the group call if they are available, e.g., their phone is turned on and they are not utilizing the phone to communicate with someone else. Therefore, in a group call with a pre-defined group, while having significant utility, the group must be defined prior to the call, thus, reducing some of the flexibility for defining the group that may be desired in certain circumstances.
Another current method of establishing a group call that may have potential drawbacks in particular circumstances is to dynamically establish the group for the call. In this method, the group is not required to be pre-defined, as discussed above, but rather, the group members are selected by the initiator of the group call in conjunction with establishing the group call. This methodology may be referred to as a selective dynamic group call since the group members are selectively defined by the call initiator and also are dynamically defined, i.e., not pre-defined.
Whereas the selective dynamic group call can provide further flexibility over the pre-defined group call, this type of group call may also have limitations in certain circumstances. With both the pre-defined group call and the selective dynamic group call, a group must be defined for the call by a party to the call. Therefore, in the currently known methods, if a dispatch multi-party communication is to be conducted, the parties that are to participate in the communication must be known. However, there are circumstances where it may not be known who should participate in the call. For example, if a group call was being conducted between people that have an interest in a particular topic, e.g., the traffic situation on a particular highway, it is not possible to define a group that included every possible person that may have an interest in participating in the group call. Therefore, there would be some individuals who would desire to participate in the call, however, because their identity may not be known to the group owner/chairperson of the call, they are not able to define these individuals as being part of the group, and thus, they would not be able to participate in the call. Thus, current methods for conducting dispatch multi-party communications require a potential participant to be identified by a party to the call in order to participate. If the potential participant is not known to a party to the call, the potential participant may not be able to participate.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved dispatch multi-party call capability. The improved capability could provide greater flexibility for composing the participants in the multi-party call.